Postponements further complicate St. Louis Cardinals schedule

The St. Louis Cardinals must already play six makeups; now they have three more that must be shoehorned into the schedule.

Friday’s announcement that this weekend’s series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs in St. Louis has been postponed due to COVID-19 presents the latest and most serious challenge yet to schedule-makers.

To date, Major League Baseball has managed to cram in makeup dates for all the COVID-postponed games. That includes three games between the Cardinals and Detroit Tigers that were to have been played earlier this week. Those games have been re-scheduled as doubleheaders on Aug. 13 in Detroit and Sept. 13 in St. Louis.

The Cardinals also face makeups of three COVID-postponed games with the Milwaukee Brewers. Those will be played as doubleheaders Sept. 14, Sept. 16, and Sept. 25.

The obvious problem is that the Cardinals are running out of off-day options to deal with any additional makeups such as the three that now need to be played with the Cubs.

The two teams have only one mutual off day, that being Aug. 27. The problem with using that date is that it interrupts a Cubs road trip that has them in Detroit the previous day and Cincinnati the following day.

For the Cardinals, the problem with booking a double-header on that day is two-fold. The first problem is that it leaves the Cardinals with only a single off day – Sept. 3 – between now and the end of the season.

Assuming the Cardinals are back on the field for their scheduled series with the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday – and assuming the Cubs makeups are worked in somewhere —  they would be scheduled to play 55 games in the 49 days between Monday and the end of the season Sept. 27.

The second problem is that even if a double-header is scheduled on that lone mutual off day, that doesn’t fully resolve the problem. The Cubs and Cards would still need to work in a third makeup game.

The only option for that game would be to play it in Chicago as a double-header. The Cardinals are scheduled to be in Chicago Aug. 17 through Aug. 19 and again Sept. 4 through Sept. 7.

The teams could also forego the idea of an Aug. 27 double-header and make up all three games during the Cards’ two trips into Chicago. But that would create an even longer string of doubleheaders for St. Louis, which is already scheduled to play twice against the Tigers Aug. 13, again against the Tigers Sept. 10, and against the Brewers Sept. 14, Sept. 16 and Sept. 25.

The St. Louis Cardinals haven’t played a game since losing 3-0 to the Minnesota Twins on July 29.